Strength and equipload is tightly-coupled for sure. I also thought about merging that. The tricky part is: How much can you merge without losing too much overall flexibility.
@Psytoxin came up this something i also found interesting.
btw are critical strikes currently in the game?
yes
Thats exactely the point. In my opinion Weapon/Gear should be as neutral/passive as possible in relation to the wearer. They are just tools, becoming/effecting something in the hands of the wearer. Therefore every physical melee weapon in the game needs a STR scaling for the melee damage part. How much each weapon scales is another story(maybe some weapons scale more in higher STR ranges). I do not want my STR to scale my magical damage output with my two handed staff for sure.
The weapon designer has to decide what is involved in the scaling of all the different parts of the weapon and this formula must be clear to the player (more tooltips)
Maybe there a weapons or gear items with implicit attributes/effects giving them more personality.